PONE-D-20-36087

Consumer engagement in health care policy, research and services: methods and effects

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wiles,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

The reviewer has requested some revisions, in addition to the items raised by the reviewer, please address the following points before more consideration:

Consumer (Or an illustrative term Customer) is a crucial part of any system success, and play a determinant role in policy/ program success and quality. There are a rigorous relationship between customer participation in service delivery and quality improvement.

It appears you needs to a revise your search strategy and search terms to cover all relevant studies.  For example we investigate the role of pregnant women in both quality improvement and assessment activities as customer self-audit. There are many relevant studies using Centering Pregnancy® program to participate women in their own maternity services.  

•  Gholipour K, Tabrizi JS, Jafarabadi MA, Iezadi S, Mardi A. Effects of customer self-audit on the quality of maternity care in Tabriz: A cluster-randomized controlled trial. PloS one. 2018 Oct 11;13(10):e0203255.

•  Gholipour K, Tabrizi JS, Asghari Jafarabadi M, Iezadi S, Farshbaf N, Farzam Rahbar F, Afsharniya F. Customer's self-audit to improve the technical quality of maternity care in Tabriz: a community trial. EMHJ-Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal. 2016;22(5):309-17.)

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Kamal Gholipour, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

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2. Please ensure that you have addressed all items recommended in the PRISMA checklist including identifying the study as a meta-analysis in the title.

3. Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to PLOS ONE. During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and the following previously published works.

- https://cccrg.cochrane.org/priority-reviews/more-about-our-consumer-engagement-priority-review

- https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004563.pub2

- https://www.who.int/evidence/sure/PatientSafetyfullreport10052014.pdf?ua=1

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Please revise the manuscript to rephrase the duplicated text, cite your sources, and provide details as to how the current manuscript advances on previous work. Please note that further consideration is dependent on the submission of a manuscript that addresses these concerns about the overlap in text with published work.

We will carefully review your manuscript upon resubmission, so please ensure that your revision is thorough.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Please see attachment. Answer to question 2 above--statistical analysis-- relates to the presentation, and possible synthesis of odds ratios. Please see attached review for more specifics.

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Reviewer #2: This is a thorough and careful job, and this work will be of interest to everyone who wishes to promote patient engagement in health services, policy and research. I am recommending acceptance because I do not feel that I need to see it again. I do have a couple of comments.

First, it is surprising that the authors report no specific funding for such a substantial effort. Surely somebody must have been paying salaries for this. Also, the idea that you involved patient advocates and other stakeholders in the work without providing any compensation seems contrary to the spirit of the thing. I think readers would want to know how this was resourced.

It is rather odd to see repeated use of the conditional in the methods. If it turned out that the nature of the available publications did not allow you to use a certain method you can just say that.

On the whole, with the exception of neonatal mortality, the evidence for most of the outcomes seems quite weak. This is not only because of risk of bias, but also because in many cases the investigators looked at multiple outcomes and found evidence for some but not others. The positive findings often pertained to intermediate outcomes and not to more downstream outcomes, as well. While you do generally acknowledge the need for more evidence and you are restrained in endorsing conclusions, I still have an overall feeling that you might be overselling the findings just a bit. Maybe that's just me. Anyway I appreciated this and I think it's a worthy contribution.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes:

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PLoSOne_ConsumerEngagement_Review.pdf

Consumer engagement in health care policy, research and services: A systematic review and meta-analysis of methods and effects.

PONE-D-20-36087R1

Dear Dr. Hillier,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Kamal Gholipour, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: